Rand Paul: It’s Not Just Democrats — Republicans Are Breaking the Bank Too

Conservatives are often disappointed when Republicans tell us one thing at home when they’re running for office and do quite the opposite as soon as they cross the Potomac.

It doesn’t take a long memory to remember that Republicans campaigned on “repealing Obama­care.” These Republicans came home to campaign and loudly proclaimed: “Give us a Republican House!”

Conservatives stepped up and made it so.

But the GOP candidates came back and pleaded: “No, we can’t repeal Obamacare unless you give us a Republican Senate.”

So, conservative activists gave Republicans the Senate. 

To which the Republican Congress opined, “We’re close, this close to repealing Obamacare. Just give us the House, the Senate, and the White House and we will repeal Obamacare!”

We all know how that turned out. Voters gave Republicans both Houses of Congress and the Presidency and Republicans reneged and we live with Obamacare to this day.

Likewise, Republicans came home and said: “Vote Republican! The Democrats spend too much and borrow too much!”

And conservatives gave Republicans another shot. Because, as conservatives, we know Democrats don’t care about the debt but we continue to hope Republicans do.

So, I have “shocking” news for conservatives, big-government Republicans are really secretly tied at the hip to spendthrift Democrats. The Republicans differ only in where they wish to spend the money.

I can best explain it, as I did recently to my Senate Republican colleagues:

Our leadership paints the massive spending bill before us a Republican victory because it secures $45 billion more for military spending. That is one perspective, but it ignores the real question: Is adding $45 billion more to a military budget that exceeds the next 10 nations combined improving our national security?

Or, is a spending bill that adds over a trillion dollars to our $31 trillion debt more of a threat to our national security? 

I come down firmly on the side that our debt is the greatest threat to our national security. I fear more the possibility that America will collapse from within by destroying our currency and cratering the economy than I fear a foreign military invasion of our soil.

So, as Christmas approaches, and Big Government Republicans join Democrats to load up a “Christmas tree” spending spree with pork for all, remember that the monstrous bill, thousands of pages long, put together in the middle of the night and presented with mere hours to read, is the bipartisan compromise of advocates for the welfare state joined hand-in-hand with advocates of the warfare state.